Game Review: Lost Records: Bloom and Rage

Mikayla Leskey | Arts and Entertainment

Painted colorful green pinewood forest in Euskadi. Oma, Spain. / Photo by 'ABBPhoto', licensed by Envato.com.

A few months ago I played a game called “Lost Records: Bloom and Rage” and I don’t think anything could’ve prepared me for the absolute mesmerizing story that this game told. Lost Records: Bloom and Rage is a storymode game where every single choice you make has consequences. It’s made by DON’T NOD, a video game company which also made games like Life is Strange and Tell Me Why.

In Lost Records: Bloom and Rage you go between two time periods; the summer of 1995 and 2022. You try to figure out what happened to the main cast; Swann, Nora, Autumn, and Kat in 1995, why they were sent a box with their band name covering it and why now—why they’re remembering each other and that summer after not talking or thinking about each other since.

You play as Swann, who in 1995 has a camcorder that allows the player to capture moments of all of her friends and whatever they’re doing at the time, i.e. exploring an abandoned playground or hiking through the woods or making music. The summer of ‘95 is when she meets Nora, Autumn, and Kat for the very first time. They meet after Kat’s sister’s boyfriend starts bullying them.

They spend every single day with each other since the night they met. They have that type of friendship that makes you never witness their meeting—like they’ve been friends for years. Moreover, the more you play, the more you realize something isn’t right with this summer, or their town. From the beginning to the end, it’s like something possessed them.

This game will make you want more at every single moment. It keeps you curious, moving from one section to the next, trying to figure out what’s going on with all the characters and what’s exactly happening with all of them. There’s something supernatural going on with this friend group and this town. Something I don’t think we ever fully understand—just that this thing, the abyss, needs to be satiated.

The visuals of this game is amazing, so many scenes had me in awe at how beautiful video games can be. In some scenes it feels almost magical, the way the lighting hits the ground, or how the girls crowd together. It makes you long for something just like that.

This game brings magical realism to the next level. Not only from the unsettlingness from the slow changes that happens in the girls, making them more angry, more defensive of each other and themselves. But also the political topics this game breaches, quite literally having “f*** the world” being one of the biggest themes in the summer of ‘95 part.

This isn’t a game you’ll forget playing. It tells a story that make you long to be apart of, and have experienced yourself. The plot twists are unexpected, so are some of the relationships. This is a slow-going game but that makes it worth it even more. It makes you stop and think for yourself.